


and it aches

by takecourage



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Angst, Codependency if you squint, Depression, Excessive Drinking, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Human Disaster Endeavour Morse, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mortality, Suicidal Thoughts, but not in a fun way, give max a medal, or maybe just a break
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takecourage/pseuds/takecourage
Summary: Morse is sat on his living room floor, head resting against the wall, drink in hand. Hauntingly beautiful voices come washing over him through the darkness, a wave of music from his record player, and he feels absolutely nothing.
Relationships: George Fancy/Shirley Trewlove, Max DeBryn/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	and it aches

It’s dark. It’s winter. It’s always dark.

Morse is sat on his living room floor, head resting against the wall, drink in hand. Hauntingly beautiful voices come washing over him through the darkness, a wave of music from his record player, and he feels absolutely nothing.

A deep, festering nothing, burning in his chest, slowly seeping into every part of him. He doesn’t want to die, but it feels like he’s inches from it.

He desperately wants someone to take care of him, but the thought of it — someone gently easing a glass out of his hands, loosening his tie, pulling a blanket over his sleeping body, pressing a kiss to his forehead — physically repulses him.

He’s walking through the streets of Oxford, along the roads, hardly bothering to avoid the late night taxis and buses. It’s dark. It’s winter. It’s always dark. Why is it always so fucking _dark?_

He’s drunk, he knows he is; it’s in the way his memory cuts out every few steps, the way the shop walls lurch to meet him when he thinks he’s walking in a straight line, it’s in the burning tears in his eyes and the way he keeps mumbling George Fancy’s name over and over again. If he says it enough times, if he avoids all the cracks on the pavement, if he taps every lamppost twice, George’ll come back.

No matter what he drinks, he can’t get George out of his head. His glassy eyes and his slack mouth and the way his head lolled when Morse tried to bring him back to life but he was long, long gone. He’s dead and it’s like a black hole in Morse’s chest. There’s no words for the grief that grips him so entirely. George is dead and there's _nothing_ he can do about it.

He’s knocking on Max’s door before he realises what he’s doing. He puts on a smile and holds up a bottle of almost-expensive whiskey, saying _I thought you might like a drink._ Max grins and shakes his head and lets him in. Max pours them a drink. And a second. And a third. And on and on until Morse loses count and he’s suddenly kissing Max and he could _cry —_ it’s going to be alright. Everything is going to be alright, as long he has Max.

The sunlight streams in through the bedroom curtains and he’s in Max’s arms, and everything is alright. He closes his eyes, trying to block out everything but the feeling of Max against him. Everything is going to be alright. He should make himself useful, make them breakfast or something; but Max has made it very clear that if Morse ever tries to set foot in his kitchen again after the incident last month, he’ll have to flee the country — no, the _continent —_ to escape his wrath. He smiles, mostly to himself. Everything is going to be alright.

Max makes him feel something. It’s not love; but he always mistakes the sensation for it.

&

It’s sunrise. It’s the middle of the day. It’s still dark.

Thursday is looking at him funny, asking him if he’s alright, and he’s saying _yes,_ _sir, fine_ between gulps of tea that has half a bottle of whiskey so cheap it was practically free in it. He had thrown a handful of dirt over a coffin that he should never have seen buried earlier that day. It’s almost laughable about how _not alright_ he is. He’s trying. God knows he’s fucking trying. But if it isn’t the hardest thing he’s ever done.

Hours later and Morse is sat on his bed, leaning heavily against the wall, bottle in hand. He gets paid at the end of next week. It’s more than enough to drink himself to death on. The thought comes as a sudden, dizzying flash, and he expects it to disappear with his next drink, but it lingers for hours.

He finishes the bottle. He cracks open the next one. He thinks he will feel the indents in his shoulder left by George Fancy’s coffin for the rest of his life.

George. Already drifting from Morse’s memory — he can hardly picture him together; his eyes, his smile, his hair come into Morse’s mind easily, but not cohesively, like he is - _was_ \- merely the sum of his parts. His laugh, his endless energy, his boyish charm, leeching away and being replaced by the blood coming from his mouth, the dim light reflecting in his glassy eyes, a broken body on the sticky carpet of a snooker bar.

He was more than his body. His handwriting, his crumpled shirts, his favourite drink, his favourite book, whichever song makes Shirley tear up and smile when she hears it because it was their song, his nervous tics, the cologne and the toothpaste and the shampoo he used, the place where he grew up and the place where he came. The dip in his mattress, the accidental scratches on his walls, the hastily covered-up stains on his carpet, the scuffs in his shoes. His heart. He had such a good heart. And what a fat load of good that did him.

His body might have been gone, but George, or at least the memory of him, is still everywhere because there has to be more than the body, so weak and easily destroyed, otherwise what’s the point? What’s the point of any of this? Morse finishes his drink in one gulp, spilling some on his duvet. He doesn’t care. George Fancy is dead. And it aches.

Oh god, it _aches_.

He’s sat in Max’s garden, drinking almost-cheap whiskey straight from the bottle. Max is talking at him about grief, about how everyone is in the same boat, about how it’ll get easier. He nearly laughs at that. If there’s one thing he knows to be true, it’s that it never, ever gets easier. He kisses Max then, hard and desperate and he’s crying when he pulls away.

Max looks at him with eyes full of pity, prises the bottle out of his hands and tells him _don’t argue_ , guides him inside with a hand on his lower back and makes him lie down on the sofa, pulling a blanket over him. Morse kisses him again, harder, hoping he’ll ignore the tears in Morse’s eyes because he _needs_ this, he needs something to stop this never-ending awful fucking _aching_ inside him, but Max only pulls away, pushes him back onto the sofa, telling him softly to just go to sleep, it’ll be easier in the morning. Morse lies there, trying not to start sobbing into the sofa for what must be hours, while Max sits by him, stroking his hair, until he thinks he’s asleep.

The second Max is up the stairs, Morse is up and pulling the bottle of whiskey out of the bin, drinking it and passing out on the bathroom floor.

Max makes him feel something. It’s not love; but it’s close enough.

&

It’s an endless day. It's summer. It’s still so dark. It’s still so fucking _dark_.

Morse is lying in his bed, hardly able to feel where he ends and the mattress begins, a slowly drying whiskey stain on his shirt, surrounded by empty bottles and half-empty glasses that are starting to go mouldy and that never-ending _silence_. It stretches out into forever, infinite and aching.

He thinks about slitting his wrists, about hanging himself, about being caught in the crossfire in a dingy snooker bar even though he was told to wait. George never listened. And neither does Morse. It could’ve been him. It should’ve been him.

In his head, George Fancy is smoking, walking out the station door, laughing with Strange and orbiting around Shirley. Morse is alone. George is alive. Morse is alone and George is alive, laughing and in love.

He thinks about slitting his wrists.

The thought sits there, heavy and awkward, all while he walks to Max’s house.

Max doesn’t look annoyed when he answers the door. He looks used to it, but like he’d rather not be. They stand there, regarding each other for too long to be comfortable.

“I haven’t been stabbed,” Morse blurts, breaking that painfully heavy silence.

“What a shame,” Max says dryly, stepping aside to let him in. He can easily pretend it’s _I love you_. It’s just three words.

He gets handed a glass of water, Max saying how he can practically taste the drink on him and that he’s not having a repeat of the last time.

(Morse lying still on the bathroom floor, hand loosely curled around a broken bottle top, blood everywhere from where he hit his head off the side of the bath. Bright red on white porcelain under warm sunlight. Dark red on white fabric under flickering neon lights. George Fancy, dead)

He’s leaning against the dining room table, water in hand, wishing he was badly, _badly_ hurt. At least then he’d have a reason. At least then Max might feel sorry for him. At least then Max might touch him, just to remind him he exists outside of this endless aching.

“Why are you here?” Max asks like he’s not expecting an answer.

Morse vaguely shrugs, keeping his face blank. “Thought I’d say hello.”

“It’s gone midnight.”

“Hello.”

“You’ll be the death of me.”

“Like I was the death of George.” He finishes the rest of his water in one gulp, like it’s a real drink.

A horrible, horrible silence. He wants to throw the glass at Max’s head, to smash it on the table and slam his wrists into the shards.

“Morse, I really don’t think—”

“This isn’t— this isn’t _about_ you,” Morse interrupts, because if it was, it wouldn’t have been a problem. He would gladly crawl through fire if it meant Max wouldn’t leave.

“It never is, is it?”

A surge of dull fear far too big for his body. He sees it in the slump of Max’s shoulders, the set of his jaw, his crossed arms in such a way as to comfort himself. This is why he always runs before anyone else can. After a while, he thought he wasn’t risking anything, or at least not much, by staying. But he’s ruined it, he’s ruined everything, because that is what he does best. He’s says the wrong thing, and that does it. If he doesn’t run, someone else will. He wasn’t built for love, for tenderness, and for all the lingering gazes and secret smiles that come with it, but for the endless aching of being nothing more than a graceless tangle in an alleyway, behind locked doors, or in a bed that will be empty by morning.

And he could take this from absolutely anyone else, anyone at all. Just not Max.

He could start apologise. He could start a fight. He could say something, a combination of magic words that would start the day over again and he wouldn’t leave his house, wouldn’t leave his bedroom, wouldn’t stay awake so he could just avoid all this. Any second now, he’s going to wake up and this will have all been a bad dream. He’ll wake up in Max’s bed, and he’ll make them breakfast, and he’ll prove himself useful, and he won’t argue, and he won’t make a scene, and he’ll be _normal_ , and Max will tell him he loves him, and it’ll all be okay. He takes a deep, shaky breath. It’s all going to be okay. It has to be okay. Any second now.

“Just… just go.” It’s not Max talking, but Doctor DeBryn, the one voice he unwaveringly obeys. Max knows this. But Morse can’t be alone again.

Any second now.

“Morse, are you listening to me?” Exasperation. Tiredness. A touch of despair.

This is not happening. He’s dreaming and he’ll wake up, any second now. He just has to blink twice, or tap his fingers against the wall in a certain way, or count to a thousand in multiples of seven, or— “I love you,” he says, a frantic attempt at keeping Max that fails the second it falls from his lips.

“Clearly, you don’t.”

Any second now. Max’s hands on his shoulders, firmly guiding him to the door. Any second now, _please_. Max turns away with such finality no-one could’ve dreamed it. He blinks hard, hoping to see Max’s bedroom ceiling instead of his door. Any second now. Max’s door, closed.

He realises he’s not going to wake up in Max’s bed, now or ever again.

And he gives up on trying.

He’s in his bathroom, forehead pressed against the cold porcelain of his sink, brokenly sobbing between gulps of whiskey that tastes like bleach. His head is a kicked wasp’s nest, furiously buzzing with cruel thoughts, stinging and stinging and stinging. He’s going to die. He’s going to die alone, in this bathroom or in a hospital bed, old and grey. He’s going to die as nothing more than a pile of dirty clothes, huddled in a corner, and lifeless eyes that no-one can quite remember the colour of. He’s going spend eternity rotting away in total silence, no music and no laughter and no love. He doesn’t want to be cold and unfeeling and empty. He doesn’t want to die.

He wants Max.

Max makes him feel something. It’s nothing like love by now; but he’ll take _anything_ , anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> basically i rewatched icarus nd will never ever forgive them for what they did to George :(


End file.
